Belated Willow Springs OR (7-21-06)

by Sarah Jones

After an interesting drive with excellent directions (a picture for each fork in the road - amazing), several wrong turns, and hot, hot weather (even with AC) Kathleen and I finally reached Willow Springs. We chose the bowl (out of the ridge, bowl, or Ayer’s flat) particularly because I happened to recognize Rob Hawley and he was set up there. Setting up was a breeze, as always, as was the weather. The heat was finally dying off and a light wind was sweeping over the hills making things pleasant. The grass underfoot was like straw, crunchy and yellow.

We checked out the other areas, and I think I’ll set up on the ridge next time. You get a lot more of the sky, and the breeze they get up there won’t bother me so much since I’m not imaging and I don’t have a huge scope (just my usual Orion XT10). We chatted with a bunch of SJAA’ers and TACo’s. I heard about the random rabbits that happen to live under the shed in Ayer’s flat. Apparently they’re pretty friendly.

Heading back to our spot, it was getting darker and the clouds were grinning at us maliciously. Kathleen is addicted to taking pictures, so we have plenty of cloud shots filed away. I’ve included a couple on my picture page, just for looksy. The darkness was surprising, light domes barely visible from Monterey (I think?) and…. Gilroy? It’s been a while, perhaps next time I should write my observing report less than a month after the actual observing, eh?

Kathleen sat with my red headlamp reading her book while I took a look at Jupiter. The seeing at Willow Springs (at least that night) was phenomenal. I’m used to a little boiling/swimming, but this was crisp! She (Kathleen, not Jupiter) jumped a few times, as something was bothering her around her feet. So I looked over with my flashlight and saw the ground just SWARMING with ants. I told her to move, very calmly, but I didn’t let her see the ground until she was at least six feet away. *Shudder*… That was fun. So we grabbed our chairs and put them on the other side of my scope, and I didn’t have a problem with them for the rest of the night.

I grabbed a bunch of Messier’s, and found a few that I felt immensely proud of. Here’s what notes I took for the night. This is from an Orion XT10, remember, and I only really used my 25mm most of the night. (And keep in mind I’m bound to make at least a handful of mistakes, either in my copying down of the material or brain farts at the time of the observing. Corrections and Suggestions are completely welcome). A lot of my notes just include the way it looked, I’ve left out some of the usual info on each one since these are just the Messiers.

M80-Globular Cluster- was really easy to find, pretty small and not easily resolvable.

M51-Whirlpool Galaxy- was faint at the time, but it was still getting dark and I didn’t spend much time on it. It’s usually my favorite, but since I saw it so well at Shingletown, it just hasn’t been the same since.v M7-Open Cluster- seemed really huge to me, I enjoyed that.

(Most of the time I forgot to look at the size of the objects before I started looking for them, so I’d be searching and searching for these tiny clusters and then, POW I’d run into a big one. It was kind of fun, but I must remember to check sizes before I search in the future.)

M4-Globular Cluster- was hella sweet! (My exact notes at the time, even I’m shaking my head at myself now…) It was very large, and I could resolve the stars easily. I spent some time on that one, just playing around with it.

M6-Open Cluster- seemed pretty spaced out to me, and I remember seeing it before. This is the one that looks like an angelfish or a butterfly. So many stars, amazing!

(Is it just me, or did I have a little too much caffeine by this time?)

M54-Globular Cluster- was extremely small, no resolution of the stars.

M70-Globular Cluster- took me too long to find, I just wasn’t getting my proportions in my head to match the ones on my chart until I just sat down and stared at it. Eventually I worked it out that M70- was twice the distance from M54 as M54 was from zeta (?) Sagittarius. I could resolve some of the stars around the edge, it wasn’t bad. But it was small.

M69-Globular Cluster- (I was playing in Sagittarius for a time) was pretty weak. I kind of thought it looked like a faint elliptical galaxy. It wasn’t too bad (I was feeling happy about finding anything at this point) and it was worth the search.

M28-Globular Cluster- was very nice, and I hadn’t looked at it before this point. It was bigger and easier to resolve than Ms 69, 54, and 70.

M22-Globular Cluster- was larger, beautiful and very resolvable. I spent some time admiring it.

I took a shot at some nebulae, mostly in the Milky Way. I hadn’t actually spent much time there, since I hadn’t had a great sky atlas before. Now that I finally got The Observer’s Sky Atlas by Karkoschka, I could finally find all the objects I’d had such a hard time looking for. Now keep in mind, I didn’t have any filters, but it was a pretty dark night and I enjoyed them nonetheless.

M8- Lagoon Nebula- I could actually see some nebulosity, it was faint but visible.

M17-Swan Nebula- I could see the swan shape, it was spectacular!

M18-Open Cluster- was sparse but not too bad.

M16-open cluster/eagle nebula- I could see some nebulosity, just barely. The stars looked to me as if they were in the shape of an S.

M25-Open Cluster- I didn’t realize at first it’d be so big. It’s a great one to spend a long time staring at.

M24-Milky Way Patch- I’m sure we’ve all spent forever gazing at this one.

M23-Open Cluster- not a bad one, but I was feeling a bit cheery at the time.

At about this time, I took a break, snacking, drinking soda (I keep trying to say pop but all you Californians get confuzzled so I am forced to adapt. Perhaps I shall say soda-pop?), and, um… Listening to my Ipod. Random is good. I spent quite some time enjoying the scenery, gazing at the Milky Way, and watching people bustle about. I didn’t get back to observing for a while, and a lot of people had headed to bed. It was about 2:05 a.m. when I started up again.

M31-Andromeda Galaxy- Absolutely superb! I could definitely see the dark lanes, though I wish I had a scope that could get all of it in the field of view.

M32- A nice enough galaxy in its own right, poor thing is always tagging along with Andromeda, never gets enough recognition for its own beauty.

M110-Galaxy- If you look at 31 and 32, you have to include 110 even though it is fainter and less interesting.

M33-Triangulum galaxy- I doubt I’d ever see this at Montebello, it’s big, but it’s faint.

M76-Planetary Nebula- Really does look just like a little dumbbell! It was surprisingly easy to find for a 2.5’ diameter object. It looked pretty clear to me, just small.

M103-Open Cluster- No biggie, seriously why is this a Messier Object?

NGC663-Open Cluster- It was awesome at the time, it seemed a little strange to me, but it had a lot of stars.

NGC654-Open Cluster- It happened to be nearby, fainter, kind of cloudy with fewer stars.

NGC884 & NGC 889 -Double Cluster- One could spend hours in these big beauties. I ran into them while aimlessly following a satellite from M103.

M13-Globular Cluster- Hercules is always a must-see, and it was, of course, spectacular and well-resolved.

M92-Globular Cluster- had a dense, bright core, very nice.

M74-Spiral Galaxy- was an averted vision nightmare, it was HARD but worth the find. I just couldn’t get much more than a blur.

M39-Open Cluster- looked rather nice and triangular in my finderscope.

M45-Pleiades- just popped up over the horizon, and even when they’re so close to the horizon, they’re just perfect.

M71-Globular Cluster- Faint, but resolvable.

M27-Dumbell Planetary Nebula- It was green, and I could see the shape, especially using averted vision. It was quite beautiful.

M15-Globular Cluster- it was just a tiny dot, but I liked it. It was quite bright.

NGC7009-Saturn Planetary Nebula- Okay, this was on my chart, and I thought finding it would help me find M73 so I looked for it. This was one of those mistakes of not checking the size of an object before searching for it. I had no idea it was just a TINY blue dot about 1 arc minute across. I absolutely had to find this, I was determined. Y’all are lucky you were asleep by this time; I hope I didn’t wake any of you up with my “whoop!” when I found it. I thought it looked like a beautiful tiny blue marble. I didn’t notice the Saturn-shape at the time, though I think if I had known it was the Saturn Nebula, I would have checked.

So on to M73-“Open Cluster”- My exact notes are as follows: “Messier was drunk when he made this an ‘object’. 3-4 stars, are you kidding me?!?”

Ahem…

M72-Globular Cluster- When they say faint, they mean it! It took some time to find, but it was actually not that bad. Is it really a glob? Looked so faint it was hard to tell.

M2-Globular Cluster- quite small, but a nice core.

I ended at about 3:56 a.m., with the Hyades poking their heads up over the horizon.

I should mention my companion for the night, Mr. Gerbil. He kept me company in his hidey-hole by my chair, followed me to the bathroom on two separate occasions, and didn’t mind me shining my red flashlight on him. Quite a pleasant fellow, and very curious.

I took an awesome shot of the moon as it was coming up over the horizon, with the dark side about as bright as a full moon on an ordinary night. Even that tiny sliver of a crescent was enough to ruin the rest of my observing, though, and I packed up slowly until Kathleen woke up and we headed out just in front of the sun.

Excellent night of observing, my most productive by FAR. I wish I could make it to the next Willow Springs, but I have a previously scheduled caving trip for that weekend and I have to pass.

Sarah E. Jones